Idea/request to make Webflow CMS even more amazing!

If Webflow were to allow us to accept form submissions directly to our CMS, the use cases of Webflow would skyrocket from a social standpoint. Website creators would be able to completely build and host social media content websites (like Reddit, Imgur, 9GAG, forums, etc) on Webflow CMS/hosting with this capability. I imagine there are hundreds of creative use cases I can’t even think of right now.

On top of that, accepting file attachments to forms would also be hugely beneficial for this purpose. The content could either get submitted automatically to the live site, or get added as a Draft in the CMS for manual submission.

This sort of Form → CMS flow will open a lot of possibilities for Webflow and also encourage more people to host on Webflow CMS (because the value of the CMS is bolstered). What does everyone think?

Best,
Christopher

4 Likes

Zapier to Webflow
Webflow currently encourages us to use Zapier to accept form submissions and do useful things with them as seen here. Why not turn this integration around?

Webflow should allow Zapier “zaps” to have control over our Webflow CMS. This will allow us to accomplish a few highly-requested, key things.

Examples of what we will be able to do:

  1. Save form submission entries directly to our CMS (as described in above post)
  2. Automate the batch uploading of content to CMS (get your entire offline database onto Webflow CMS)
  3. Sync up-to-date info in real time from Google Sheets (the possibilities are endless with this one)
  4. A plethora of other creative use cases

We want more control and freedom over our CMS… the current one-at-a-time updating of Webflow CMS data is limiting to managing large, complex databases and is blocking intricate use cases of Webflow. Please seriously consider integrating Zapier with CMS to unlock the amazing possibilities enumerated above.

Best,
Christopher

1 Like

Great ideas! We’re currently planning how this “bring data into CMS” flow would look like, and this feedback is very valuable. We definitely want to support these use cases, so stay tuned!

6 Likes

Thank you @brryant.

I have plans to build, launch, and host a large, complex CMS-dependant website on Webflow by August (thousands of CMS entries in a variety of branching Collections). Knowing that Webflow has plans to bolster the abilities of your CMS to support more complex use cases makes me more confident when deciding to host on Webflow vs. some alternative. I will need to be able to navigate fairly large sets of connected information and am hoping Webflow CMS will help me do that with ease. For me it’s a matter of time - when handling large sets of data in your CMS right now it is very time intensive. A Google Sheets Zapier → Webflow integration or something similar internal to Webflow would make this process seamless and easy.

1 Like

@brryant Wow - just saw this:

Who needs Zapier when we could just do it all on our own using Webflow’s impending public API!? I am very excited now and hope your API launches by the end of the summer :smile:

The potential power of Google Sheets + Webflow CMS… damn!

Christopher

6 Likes

@brryant

It’s been coming soon for almost a year now :frowning:

I love the product and I can attest to it’s usefulness, but the team really does a poor job on communicating release windows. Everyone has been asking for updates even little ones and we’re constantly left in the dark. This sucks, because once Macaw gets fully integrated into inVision it may convince me to transition.

2 Likes

Great idea! Has anything happened with this?